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Badger cull begins

UK farmers began shooting badgers this week in a controversial pilot project intended to stop the spread of bovine tuberculosis. In June, the government licensed two culls, in Gloucestershire and Somerset. The aim is to kill 70 per cent of badgers in six weeks. But it could take years to find out if culling actually works.

Squid allure

Some squid catch their prey with a rod and bait. The first sightings of deep-sea Grimalditeuthis bonplandi in their natural habitat show that the squid use their strange sucker-free tentacles to lure in prey. They wiggle the tentacle tips to mimic small fish and draw in the bigger ones (Proceedings of the Royal Society B, DOI&colon; 10.1098/rspb.2013.1463).

Japan rocket no-go

A Japanese space telescope that was to spy on the atmospheres of Venus and Mars has been grounded because of an abnormality, just 19 seconds before lift-off on 27 August. The launch would have been the maiden voyage for the Epsilon rocket, designed as a cheaper way to get science satellites into space.

Hubble bags a slinky

Pictures shot by the Hubble Space Telescope more than 13 years have been pieced together to reveal the spiral, slinky-like motion of a jet of gas shooting from the black hole at the centre of the nearby M87 galaxy. Such jets are thought to play a role in galaxy evolution (The Astrophysical Journal Letters, doi.org/nj8).

Element 115 – at last?

A new chemical element may soon make its debut in the periodic table – if the international unions of pure and applied physics and chemistry agree that there is, at last, enough evidence for its existence. A team at Lund University in Sweden say they have made element 115 – as yet unnamed – building on a claim by a Russian group in 2004.